Opinion: American news programs should not be acting as North Korea’s propaganda machine

by Boris Epshteyn, Chief Political Analyst

FILE - In this Sept. 26, 2016, file photo, moderator Lester Holt, anchor of NBC Nightly News, asks a question during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Holt says his trip to North Korea was valuable despite restrictions placed upon him by his hosts. Some critics accused NBC News of presenting an air-brushed depiction of the dictatorship. But Holt and other experts say there’s a value to such trips despite the limitations. (Joe Raedle/Pool via AP, File)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Boris Epshteyn formerly served as a Senior Advisor to the Trump Campaign and served in the White House as Special Assistant to The President and Assistant Communications Director for Surrogate Operations.

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) - If you heard someone on TV talking about North Korea as a “nuclear power unafraid to confront the west,” who would you guess was reporting? My first thought would be that it is someone from North Korea's state television.

That would be the wrong answer. Those words were used by Lester Holt to describe the rogue country on his program, NBC’s Nightly News. NBC traveled to North Korea recently and produced a series of packages which can only be described as propaganda for the communist country.

We saw a glimmering North Korean ski resort. We heard “defiant” North Korean women praising “dear supreme” leader Kim Jong Un. You may also know him as little rocket man. We learned just how jazzed North Korea is to be teaming up with South Korea for the Olympics.

These pieces made me wonder what an NBC Nightly News report from the Berlin Olympics of 1936 would have been like.

Sure, it is a good thing that North Korea and South Korea are cooperating on the coming winter Olympics. However, the fact remains that North Korea is a brutal regime which starves, oppresses and murders its own people. I'm going to talk to you more about that on my next program.

Here's the bottom line: North Korea is a menace to the international community. It is disgusting that some in American media give sunny coverage to a brutal dictatorship in North Korea, while they jump at every opportunity to put down President Trump.